06 November 2016

Internet Hurricanes: Resilient Trust Decisions into the Future...

"Trust Decisions" are made in nanoseconds as a human being.  Your past experiences, data stored in your brain from sensory collection and a clear understanding of the rules and the consequences, assists you in your decision to trust.  To trust someone or some thing.

The science and the research on the process and systemic nature of how TrustDecisions occur, are ongoing.  Humans have for decades designed machines and software to mimic and replace our own decision making process.  It has been replaced with a foundation now found in semiconductors, artificial memory, databases, fiber optics, neural nets and 5G wireless networks.

Even deeper, trust decisions are now embedded in software code.  The machine languages that have created our ability to use the entire Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure to our advantage.  While simultaneously creating a tremendous vulnerability and opportunity for systemic risk.  Our Critical Infrastructure Sectors are forever integrated, with increasing complexity and intelligence of our man-made machines.

The Fourth industrial Revolution is upon us:

With significant growth in IoT and the cloud, machine learning and big data are becoming ever more important as a significant amount of previously untapped data are collected, assessed and digitized. These newly available data provide billions of dollars to potential businesses that can quickly and effectively evaluate the data.  Additionally, the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts global spending on cognitive systems will reach nearly $31.3 billion in 2019.   IDC further sees cognitively-enabled solutions that “offer the tools and capabilities to extract and build knowledge bases and knowledge graphs from unstructured and semi-structured information as well as provide predictions, recommendations, and intelligent assistance through the use of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep learning”.
So now what?  Only 50% of the population of our Earth is connected at this point in time.  What will happen over the course of the next two decades as the growth curve accelerates?  How as a corporate enterprise or global organization will we be able to weather the "Internet Hurricanes" that are ahead of us?
Whether it is a systemic cyber risk event or something worse, the opportunity exists now. We begin the journey by revisiting our Trust Decisions. The rules that have defined us and the rules that our machines are executing on our behalf.

The decisions to trust, that are occurring when our iPhone App utilizes wireless networks and GPS to guide us using Google Maps to our next destination.  The decisions to trust, as the bank debits your checking account and routes the funds to your mortgage company.  The decisions to trust, as the doctor reads the vital signs on the monitors attached to your loved one in the ER.

As Operational Risk Management (ORM) professionals, we must adopt a continuous resilience mindset.  We look at the automation and the benefit of the machine and yet we ask ourselves what if?  What if the battery fails?  What if the connection is lost?  What if the data is corrupted?

There is one idea that has been utilized to address this in an organization.  It begins as an exercise in resilience planning and beyond.  Start with a small team or project group.  Announce in advance that on a certain date and time, an "Internet Hurricane" will hit and a systemic cyber event will last 24 hours.  Could you survive?

This is not a new idea.  Clearly, the exercise for Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP) has other nuances yet it serves the point.  When was the last time your team was able to operate without access to data from a networked system?  The time has come to prepare for that next digital storm ahead of us.  Will you be ready to operate in an austere environment of your corporate domain without the Internet?

"It is really very simple. In the foreseeable future, we will not function as a global society without the Net and the immense digital resources and information assets of our society. The addiction is established—commerce, government, education, and our neighbors offer no option other than to require that we rely upon digital information in making decisions. But we will not function successfully if the war for control of those assets is lost. The battlefield, however, is the one on which trust is to be gained or lost—trust in the information we use, trust in the infrastructures that support us, and trust in the decisions we make in a digital world.Achieving Digital Trust - Jeffrey Ritter

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